Saturday, July 15, 2017

My aquarium is scratched and I will replace it. That is the mathematic problem at hand.

Found a nice one on Craigslist for a good price. I can just go there and buy it. But I want to keep my base for it. So the new tank's dimensions must match. I told the guy the numeric dimensions, because that's how those things are communicated, and he texted back saying he'll measure tomorrow. Today. And I haven't heard back yet. Maybe he doesn't have a tape measure or a ruler.

Pffft. Who cares about exact scientific measurement by numbers in inches?

We're talking about a 50 gallon aquarium so its dimensions are largely intuitive. It's going to be big. We're checking to see the tank its long, tall and narrow and not squat and wide. And we're checking to make sure it will fit my base exactly. Any differences between tanks will be a matter of only a few inches in either direction. So we want the proper ratio of sides, without caring about precise numerical measurements. We can act as if inches don't even exist. But ratios do. So no need for a tape measure or ruler.

I texted back suggesting he could use a piece of string to confirm. The numerical dimensions in inches are 48"x12"x18".

Beautiful numbers, don't you think?

That's 4 to 1 to 1.5

Knowing that solves everything. A short string can be pulled to shortest measurement, the width, presumably, hopefully, 12 inches for his tank.

Then that string length can be used to pinch off 4 sections of the length, presumably 48 inches.

Proof, right there.

If the top and bottom are 4:1 then the height must be 18 inches.

To prove that too, the seller can use the short string for a new ratio. Width is presumably 12" and height is presumably 18" or 2x6 : 3x6.

So the short string can be folded in half and used to pinch off three sections of height.

QED, right there. Ta-daaaaaah. Graciously bows.

Conversely, a long piece of string can be pulled off to the full length, then folded in half twice, for 4 folded lengths, and that used to compare with the width.

And that same 4 folded string halved again (for 6 inches presumably) and used to pinch off 3 sections up for the tank's height for 18 inches presumably.

If that works then his tank will definitely fit my base. And if that doesn't work then the tank will not fit my base.

Now this right here is the sort of thing they teach you in school when you pay attention and in books when you read them. But what they don't teach you is that you don't have to go digging around in your toolbox for a tape measure all the time thinking that is your only option and comparing numbers all over the place holding them in mind and confusing you when a piece of dental floss is sitting right there.

I'm pretty sure this is how cavemen and cavewomen confirmed their aquarium dimensions.

Via Drudge: April Bradley was just starting her shift that afternoon as a delivery driver for Panera Bread. She went to clock in after grabbing a drink cup for her brother, who headed to the dining room to fill it but quickly returned to tell her that someone was passed out in the back of the restaurant.

When they got to Ogburn, who she immediately recognized as a regular, he was splayed out on the carpet and “his face was just like – ooooooo,” she shivers at the thought. “Dark purple – it was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.” She picked up the phone and dialed 911, at 4:17 p.m.

The response to the call came faster than anyone could have imagined.

Maybe a football field away, Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Officer Lawrence Guiler had just finished tending to a minor accident and was in his cruiser about to get back on the road.

“I was leaving that report, made the left in the Harris Teeter parking lot, and the call came out for a male in cardiac arrest at the Panera Bread,” Guiler says. “I look up, and the Panera Bread is right there. So, immediately, I just told our dispatch, ‘Hey, I’m right here, put me on the call,’ and I went in to find him on the ground.”

Friday, July 14, 2017

Whose that girl that you could never get in the back seat even in high school? She is famous in male dominated field even though she is not that good at what she does. She is just the normal looking girl at the comic book convention. She gets a bunch of attention all out of propotion to both her looks and her talent.

The fact is guys don't even slow down the car when they are passing her by.

Giants WR Marshall: ‘Black Guys in America Get Treated Differently’

Controversial New York Giants wide receiver Brandon Marshall was in Baltic, CT on Thursday to participate in a charity golf tournament benefiting “The Johnny Damon Foundation.”

Nothing controversial about that.

But when he agreed to appear on WEEI’s Kirk and Callahan Show during a remote broadcast from the course, things took an ugly turn and ended with Marshall walking off the set.

The Boston sports talk hosts brought up a 2015 quote from Marshall, and fireworks ensued. Marshall said white quarterbacks might not get disciplined as harshly by the NFL.

“There are a lot of players out there that believe that—white players specifically, at the quarterback position—are treated differently,” Marshall said in September 8, 2015 on Showtime’s Inside the NFL.

Asked by Showtime host Adam Schein if he believes black players are held to a different standard, Marshall said, “Absolutely. At times, yes.”

Via Instapundit: With the entire automotive industry looking toward a future of driverless mobility, commercially owned self-driving taxis seem poised to be on the frontline of tomorrow. However, nobody seemed to realize that these vehicles will eventually become little more than mobile toilets.

Animals are universally disgusting and humans are no exception. While we’ve mastered land, air, and sea, consider the spaces we occupy while we traverse those expanses. Rental cars are returned filled with candy wrappers, spilt soda, and human hair. Uber vehicles are routinely vomited in. The subway is a haven for disease. Airplane interiors experience havoc within the first hour of a flight as the worst of us begin defecating into the seats, too lazy and weak to control ourselves.

Autonomous taxis aren’t likely to endure better treatment. Without a driver present, the urge to have drunken sex will be far too strong — and those odds only increase when you add a second occupant to the equation. With nobody watching, we’ll leave half-consumed hamburgers and cans of sweetened tea on their floors that will roll around and turn the carpet into a sticky magnet for larger pieces of garbage.

That the toy monster steals their toys at night. Specifically the ones that aren't put away.

When I was little, I built a Lego remote control for the TV. My dad was like, hey, see if it will change the channel. I kept hitting it, nothing. All of a sudden, a few channels change and I'm screaming and jumping up and down. Then it stopped working. My dad goes "That was magic, awesome Lego remote!" Thanks, Dad.

My kids were getting the vaccinations and the whole trip there I told them that getting shots in the eyeballs was the most effective way. They were terrified! When we got to the doctor's office and the nurse came in with the needles, I said, "Isn't it true that getting your shots in the eyeball the most effective way to prevent future illnesses?" She said she heard about a study they were conducting and didn't know the results. She then looked at my kids and asked if she could give them their shots in their arms instead... You never saw kids so happy and excited to roll up their sleeves in your life. All smiles and no tears.

As a child, my parents told me if I did something bad I was going to "baby jail". I believed in baby jail until I was like 12 years old. If I started crying in a public place my dad would say "Mary, stop that. You don't want to go to baby jail, do you?" And then I would just scream louder like "I don't want to go to baby jail!" I was kind of a well behaved kid until I realized baby jail wasn't real. Then I turned into a teenager and they told me that Juvenile Detention was a thing and I didn't believe them.

That, as their father, I could change their names whenever I wanted to.One time I pretended to get on the phone with the "Arizona Name Registry", and renamed my two kids Snargle and Gorf because they kept misbehaving.They were bawling. I could barely keep a straight face.

The decision is a fresh legal blow for the president just two weeks after a Supreme Court ruling allowed the administration to implement its travel ban against refugees and foreign nationals from six countries who have no connection to the U.S.

The justices said Mr. Trump’s administration couldn’t enforce the ban against people with bona fide relationships to people or organizations in the U.S. Days after, the Trump administration adopted a narrow view of what relationships counted for an exemption from the ban.

Thursday, July 13, 2017

The little girl in the video told us to share this video with everyone that we know, so here it is.

Man, is she ever good. Surprisingly good.

The video has a million and a half views on YouTube with twelve hundred comments, and that is unusual for this type of thing.

I've been watching these D-PAN videos and the kids of all ages are having so much fun together, they appear so happy, that it makes me want to go there and have fun too.

It's interesting, I think, to see their separate styles so early. Their handwritings are each unique. The song repeats enough to see the same expression performed different ways.

"Friends" is both index fingers hooked." They needn't be so broad about it, but they are, for emphasis.

"School" is one hand clapping on top of the other as a schoolmarm calling kids in from recess or sharply telling them to settle down.

"Learn" is a hand held flat palm upward with the other hand pulling up knowledge from a page into the head. While some of the kids don't pull all the way up. As if the knowledge doesn't quite make it all the way to the head.

"I know you me will friends." They're not speaking English. They're showing the same ideas. And doing that exceedingly clearly. It would be ridiculous and backward to sign "I. know. we. are. going. to. be. friends."

See how they sign "Without a sound." There is no "without" nor is there a "with" or an "out,"and there is no "a" while the concept is conveyed beautifully. They show it with both hands, ear related, "feel," the sense middle finger sign that's used a million ways, this time sensing at both ears and moving forward to "zip" or to "zero."

I love the way the boy on the bus says, "through the park and by the trees." He spells "park" and he shows "passing through the trees" so graphically that it's clear as a bell. In fact, the phrase "ring the bell" is clear as a bell.

"We don't notice anything" is "attention" the sign is based on horse blinders, then "flying past attention."

"She likes the way you sing," the boy actually signs "the way you sign."

All that up there ↑ is what you call "gloss." It means a written description of the signs used to express ideas.

You'll see.

Best with annotations turned off.

I love these kids.

Video, Meet the D-PAN Team, (Deaf Professional Arts Network) where deaf and hard of hearing and CODA, children of deaf adult, tell us what they're up to and they all seem so lovely. D-PAN.com

In another D-PAN video you must notice the woman named Azora, a CODA, from the wonderfully impressive video, "Somebody That I Used To Know" and she's having a great time (she's a hot dancer too) along with another adult and children at a campground bouncing around to the song "Happy" by Pharrell Williams. And it looks like they're all having a genuine blast.

The headlines coming out of the Episcopal Church’s annual U.S. convention are stunning — endorsement of cross-dressing clergy, blessing same-sex marriage, the sale of their headquarters since they can’t afford to maintain it.

The American branch of the Church of England, founded when the Vatican balked at permitting King Henry VIII to continue annulling marriages to any wife who failed to bear him sons, is in trouble.

Somehow slipping out of the headlines is a harsh reality that the denomination has been deserted in droves by an angry or ambivalent membership. Six prominent bishops are ready to take their large dioceses out of the American church and align with conservative Anglican groups in Africa and South America.

I wrote an essay in The Washington Post last year, during the height of the Brock Turner case, about my sons and rape culture. I didn’t think it would be controversial when I wrote it; I was sure most parents grappled with raising sons in the midst of rape culture. The struggle I wrote about was universal, I thought, but I was wrong. My essay went semi-viral, and for the first time my sons encountered my words about them on their friends’ phones, their teachers’ computers, and even overheard them discussed by strangers on a crowded metro bus. It was one thing to agree to be written about in relative obscurity, and quite another thing to have my words intrude on their daily lives.

One of my sons was hurt by my words, although he’s never told me so. He doesn’t understand why I lumped him and his brother together in my essay. He sees himself as the “good” one, the one who is sensitive and thoughtful, and who listens instead of reacts. He doesn’t understand that even quiet misogyny is misogyny, and that not all sexists sound like Twitter trolls. He is angry at me now, although he won’t admit that either, and his anger led him to conservative websites and YouTube channels; places where he can surround himself with righteous indignation against feminists, and tell himself it’s ungrateful women like me who are the problem.

The first option is out of Detroit called Project Greenlight. In this situation, live cameras would be set up inside and outside of businesses in Stockton, and the cameras would be monitored in real-time from the police headquarters.

The second option out of the Bay Area is more controversial. Richmond's Advance Peace uses taxpayer dollars to pay men with firearm history to not shoot guns.

In exchange, the men can participate in adult fellowship, mentorships and job opportunity programs.

In the wokest of woke takes,Cosmo‘s resident radical feminist reveals that baby showers, which, recently, have come to involve complex “gender reveals” where couples cut into cakes or release balloons to find out what binary sex their precious little one will be saddled with at birth, are “potentially damaging.”

Not only is Cosmo‘s crack reporter “uncomfortable” with celebrating a fetus’s “gestational markers,” but she’s very concerned that “gender-reveal” parties don’t actually reveal a baby’s gender. They reveal what genitalia the babies will be born with, which may or may not correspond to the gender they feel they are a bit down the line.

By shoehorning a newborn into either a “male” or “female” box—and worse, still, associating them with the hetero-normative colors “blue” and “pink”—expectant parents are, quite literally, Hitler.
No, we’re not joking, apparently, Hitler began associating pink with “feminine” characteristics, and so by assigning pink to a female (or a particularly effeminate male), you are basically saying you’re exactly like the mastermind behind the Third Reich. Actually probably worse, because Hitler was vegan.

If the recommendations contained in a just-released, 22-page report are enacted, Harvard would extend previously-proposed sanctions against students joining single-gender clubs, to all “fraternities, sororities, and similar organizations,” regardless of their co-ed status. And instead of instituting a blacklist — leaving non-compliant students unable to captain Harvard-recognized sports teams, or be nominated for prestigious scholarships, for example — violators would be subject to formal “disciplinary action.”

This latest proposal comes from the same faculty committee empaneled to “revise or replace” a previous, controversial proposal to blacklist members of single-gender clubs in an effort to foster campus inclusivity. FIRE has repeatedly criticized that policy as being antithetical to the promises of freedom of association Harvard makes to its students.

This new report — which suggests the university follow in the steps of Williams College and Bowdoin College by attempting to do away with social clubs altogether — goes even further, asking that students be prohibited from joining any clubs that foster any measure of exclusivity, with a particular emphasis on completely “phas[ing] out” single gender social organizations by the year 2022.

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Owney Madden got out of the big Packard and slammed the
door. He straightened his back and stretched. Put his head back and took a deep
breath. He loved the smell of the city. The smell of wet asphalt after the early
evening rain was a bracing tonic for his soul. Ever since he had come back from Sing Sing he
always stopped to savor his freedom. Simply because he knew how fleeting freedom
could be. They could take it away from him so quickly. He had to enjoy it while
he could.

He reached up to make sure that his fedora was set at its
proper place. Jaunty but not at a foolish angle that some of the boyo’s aped as
they tried to be stylish. Owney liked to look right. Not foolish. He couldn’t
afford to look foolish. It would be a death sentence.

He approached the door of the ginmill and stopped. His
driver Feeney jumped in front of him to open the door. Owney nodded at him and
walked through the door. Les majeste could not be tolerated. You had to show
that you were the king. All the time. Without exception.

Owney stood at the front of the bar and waited for his eyes
to adjust to the dark interior. There were several men all sitting separately at
tables and booths along the wall. One
man sat alone at the far end of the bar nursing a whiskey. A nondescript man. A
tired….. no an exhausted man. A man in his thirties who looked like he was much
older. One you would pass in the street without a backward glance. He had on workingman’s
clothing and was wearing a tin flat cap. Shabby but clean he seemed like every
other poor soul that was wandering through this Depression. Except for one
difference.

An alert clerk told me my driver's license expires this month. Then a few days later a second one noticed too. Immensely grateful for their attentiveness I said, "Thank you" to both of them while thinking, "Crap."

That again. Will they never leave me alone? I drive more making sure the truck is legal than I do running errands with it. I don't like to drive. This is going to take planning. Preparation. Mental preparation. I must prepare myself for entering a sweaty unhappy crowd.

I intended to go Monday. But something came up. My plants needed watering.

Then I intended to go Tuesday but something else came up. I got hungry.

Today I made up my mind not to let these emergencies that keep happening get in my way again so off I went boldly facing adversity. This took a lot of visualization. I know exactly where to go, where to park, how to deal with what I already encountered at least a dozen times.

My plan was make it easy as possible, drive straight down Broadway then straight up Mississippi to the well know location.

Right off the bat, pulling out the alley then immediately onto 11th then immediately again onto Broadway a driver honked his horn at me and another driver who suddenly parked where people turn right, crunching us all in, yelled back at him, or at me, "FUCK YOU!"

When I got to DMV the parking lot was nearly entirely empty. This was too good to be true. Turns out, it really was too good to be true. They moved. They changed, consolidated actually. The building is quite old and they're phasing it out. It's like Sears. Now they use only a small portion for people who must take a driving test, and for motorcycles. I must go somewhere else farther away. Someplace that handles even more sweaty unhappy people. The two clerks with little to do gave me instructions. But I could not see it. They're terrible at giving instruction. I came very close to abandoning the project, what the heck, I have the whole month. But I was in it now, this is the day, so decided to carry on.

Keeping directions simple as possible, I still could not visualize the new place nor its area. I didn't recognize the street names. The saving grace is the streets are arranged alphabetically. The clerk asked me, "Do you know where Casa Bonita is?"

Of course I do. Everyone who's ever watched South Park knows where Casa Bonita is. That fairly well pinpointed the place.

Colorado wisely decided not to call the new digs DMV anymore on account of that name having such a bad rap. Now DMV is consolidated into State Revenue office, with no mention of DMV. The place is huge. Much much larger than the capitol. It's sprawling. And so is parking. It's set in a park like landscaping. People are having picnics making a day of it. And every single parking spot is taken. I prepared myself mentally for entering hell itself. There are several very large entryways that all read, "State Revenue Office." None of the entrances to the block long building say anything about automobile licenses. I must take my chance. All handicapped spots were taken. I parked quite a distance away from the middle set of doors in the back and made note of the surroundings so I can find my truck again when I'm finished as you do in a shopping mall.

Entering the building from the outside I heard over loudspeakers, "Number R-847 to station 15," for the benefit of people waiting outside and I thought to myself, "Ooooooh shit! Brace yourself Bud. Calm yourself down. Breathe. Breathe."

Young families speaking Spanish passed me right up and dashed inside in front of me. It wouldn't make any difference.

Inside I encountered a lonely woman behind a very long counter. No line. No activity at all. I just walked right up to her. She gave me a ticket that read, "1-198." She told to go into the room behind her and take a seat and wait for my number to be called.

The room behind her is vast. But not all seats are taken. Work stations fill the perimeter.

I slipped off my backpack. Sat down in one of the chairs. Unzipped the backpack and removed my wallet and phone, preparing myself for a long wait. Within 30 seconds my number was called to go to station 6.

I was NOT ready for that. I looked around and found station 6. A gentleman patiently waited.

The soft spoken man in work station area asked a series of prosaic questions. He administered an eye test. The test seemed a bit bogus, the letters were shaking and the last letter on the row was some kind rune. "That last one isn't even a letter." The man didn't respond to that. He said simply, "You pass. Walk over there. He nodded to the direction immediately behind his own area.

Within 30 seconds my number was called again for me to be photographed. They also fingerprint the index finger.

I was out of the place with a new license in no more than 4 minutes, 5 minutes tops. I could not believe how fast they processed me.

I went in after everyone else in the room and left before them. I think they jumped me. I think their policy is to prioritize handicapped people. They gave me priority most likely based on my pathetic appearance clunking in with two sticks.

We must give them a lot of trouble collectively. They want us out of there quickly. That's how I'm processing this experience.

[Pro tip: Buy two canes for driver's license renewal.]

I told the woman taking the photo, "Thank you for making this painless."

She looked directly at me, for once, and she said, "Thank you for that. We don't hear it very often."

I'm OUTTA HERE! And with joy filling my heart.

I left, and the roads that were such perfect aggravating bastards on the way there with all kind of reconstruction all over the place, with busses, and very large trucks, and traffic lights stopping me constantly, and pedestrians daring to be hit, opened up widely for me on the way home and with no interference at all, no whacked drivers, so that I could speed all the back quickly and without interruption.

An illegal immigrant who sneaked into the United States from Mexico seven times was driving drunk and speeding down a Nebraska highway when he crashed his van last week, killing a passenger sitting in the back of the vehicle, prosecutors said.

Douglas County prosecutors said in court Tuesday Nemias Garcia-Velasco, 32, was deported in 2009 and 2011 and "voluntarily returned" to Mexico five times in 2005, the Omaha World-Herald reported. He was convicted of making a false claim to U.S. citizenship in 2005.

Garcia-Velasco's bail was set at $2 million. Prosecutor Ryan Lindberg in court on Tuesday requested a high bail for the illegal immigrant because he feared the man might flee the country -- again.

Part time members with other paying jobs outside of their board duties will get $50,000 a year, almost doubling their previous salary of $26,000. Board members with only LAUSD jobs will see their salary jump from $46,000 to $125,000 a year.

Lupita Sanchez Cornejo, who chairs the LA Board of Education compensation review committee that approved the raises, said the decision was unanimous.

"When we heard testimony that talked about the hours that they spend, easily over 40, 50, 60 hours in school district business, it was logical. Everyone agreed," she said.

His Instagram account received some attention Thursday when the website WIRED published an article saying Walker lacks artistic inclinations in his social media presence.

"(His photos) feature everything you expect of an Instagram account. He photographs food. He photographs "events." He photographs presumably enjoyable activities. And yet, Governor Walker insists on focusing on the least appealing part of his experience every single time," the article said.

Employees now mutter jokes in fear of the thought police of the Human Resources Department. It is no defence to say some chance remark was intended to be light hearted. Nor it is enough to say it was not intended to cause offence.

Indeed, even though it probably would not cause offence to the vast majority of people, this is not enough to be safe. If someone happens to take offence, however unreasonably, then Human Resources are in business.

An “inappropriate” remark has been uttered. Off to diversity training for re-education. This means that asking a fellow employee out for a drink is really dangerous territory.

Naturally the diversity officers have a vested interested in proposing that as many people as possible attend these courses – so that they can then point out the desperate shortage of diversity officers to run the number of courses required.

It started in the public sector but has increasingly been embraced by the big corporates. They can regard it as a way of keeping down legal bills with all those unfair dismissal cases and the need for the form to show it “takes its responsibilities very seriously” by ticking all sorts of boxes.

But anyway big firms are generally quite content for costs to be high as they can better absorb them than the small and medium sized firms which are kept in their place by such burdens.

About $8 billion a year is spent on diversity trainings in the United States alone, according to data from U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A staggering sum.

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Via Instapundit: Supporters waved "Tax the Rich" signs Monday as Seattle's city council voted unanimously to do exactly that. By a vote of 9-0, the council approved an income tax that only applies to wealthy residents, with the 2.25% tax starting at income above $250,000 for individuals and above $500,000 for married couples filing joint returns, the Seattle Times reports. The city estimates that the tax will raise around $140 million a year from Seattle's 20,000 or so wealthiest residents. Washington state doesn't have a personal income tax and a 1984 law bans cities and counties in the state from taxing net income, meaning Seattle's move is certain to face legal challenges, the AP reports.

Opponents vowed to fight the measure, with Washington State Republican Party Chair Susan Hutchison urging citizens to "forcefully resist" the tax and not pay a penny. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray says he'll sign the measure into law Friday—and he will welcome legal challenges. The goal is to replace the current "regressive" tax system with a fairer one, "while ensuring Seattle stands up to President Trump's austere budget that cuts transportation, affordable housing, health care, and social services," the mayor tells Reuters. (Illinois has ended its long budget standoff with a 32% hike in the income tax rate.)

The economy is stagnant, unemployment hovers around 25% and is twice as high for young adults, taxes are rising, and wages are falling. Half of Greek homeowners can’t make their mortgage payments and another quarter can’t afford their property taxes, according to the Bank of Greece.

“All these years, I've heard dozens of promises from the current and the previous governments on creating new jobs and bettering conditions in the country, but I never believed anything of what I heard,” said Nikos Theodoridis, 57, who became homeless during the economic crisis that began in 2007.

“Homelessness and the crisis are still here, despite all that politicians are saying,” said Theodoridis, who makes a paltry living hawking magazines on the street.

On July 5, 2015, voters soundly rejected the terms of a proposed bailout with international lenders because the plan demanded too much austerity. Yet, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his left-wing Syriza Party ignored the referendum results and signed a third bailout deal that would provide nearly $100 billion in loans the country desperately needed to avoid collapse.

Didn't read it. Because it goes to some satire site called NYT or something. But other people did read it and they report that this time the column is rather good and actually makes sense. While the snippet provided shows Brooks' typical self-elevation at the absurd degradation of everyone else outside his desperate imaginary club, told through an anecdote of an imaginary friend.

Commenters all over the place are taken by this particular paragraph that supports Brooks' larger point of his club's ruining America, we must all be reminded he's a member.

"Recently I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch.
Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw
her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino”
and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a
striata baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else
and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican."

But that's not the point of this post.

Instead, David Burge responds to this on Twitter in his inimitable way. It's a beautiful thing to behold.

That's funny. It reminded me of friend of mine, a black dude who I took to King Tutankhamen exhibit because I wanted everyone that I know to see it while it was here right next door as if the whole show came here just for me, and I still feel that, but he had to be bribed with lunch. He wasn't interested in Egyptian artifacts at all. At such a restaurant similar to what David Burge describes my friend studied the menu, all ordinary things, but could not comprehend what a chicken fried steak is. It didn't make sense. I tried a few times to explain it. A poor cut of meat that is flavorful but so tough that it's beaten flat to a pulp, to aid in chewing, then floured and fried quickly, or deep fried, as if it were chicken. He simply could not visualize that. How can a steak be chicken? I could see the gears grinding, his confusion showed on his face. So I told him to order one just to see it and taste one, along with his real choice. What the heck. Let's have some fun. So he did. He concluded they're terrible.

Correction: Further down David Burges Twitter timeline this same post by Simon Maloy re-tweeted by David Burges. Simon Maloy wrote this response, not David Burges. So I'm wrong, apparently Burges style is imitate-able.

“I never had any damaging or sensitive information about Hillary Clinton. It was never my intention to have that,” Natalia Veselnitskaya said.

When asked how Trump Jr. seemed to have the impression that she had information about the Democratic National Committee, she responded:

“It is quite possible that maybe they were longing for such an information. They wanted it so badly that they could only hear the thought that they wanted.”

Trump Jr. has confirmed that the meeting occurred, saying in a statement to The New York Times that he attended "a short introductory meeting" with the lawyer, where the topic of conversation was primarily about adoption.

On Monday, Trump Jr. seemed to confirm that he had been offered information about Clinton or her campaign but insisted that nothing untoward in the meeting had occurred.

“Obviously I'm the first person on a campaign to ever take a meeting to hear info about an opponent... went nowhere but had to listen,” he tweeted, seemingly sarcastic.

UPDATE: The New York Times says it "now has the email to Donald Trump Jr. offering Russian aid to "incriminate Hillary." His reply: "If it's what you say I love it.""

Gretchen Rachel Hammond — whose June 24 story caused a national storm after she detailed how three women flying Jewish Pride flags embossed with the Star of David were instructed to leave the gathering by organizers from the Dyke March Collective — confirmed to The Algemeiner on Monday that while she was still employed by the paper, she was not presently engaged in its reporting and writing operations.

“At this time, I have not been fired from Windy City Times, but I have been transferred to working full time for the sales department,” Hammond explained in an emailed statement. “The reasoning is an internal matter and I have been instructed not to comment about it even to close friends. Given my present situation, I must comply with this instruction.”

Listen I just read the last post and it is a bunch of malarkey. It is not because of sex robots, or porn or shyness. There is only one reason why Japanese men do not want to have sex with Japanese woman.

Via Instapundit: Nearly half of Japanese people are entering their 30s without any sexual experience, according to new research.

The country is facing a steep population decline as a growingnumber of youngsters abstain from sex and avoid romantic relationships.

Some men claimed they "find women scary" as a poll found that 43 per cent of people aged 18 to 34 from the island nation say they are virgins.

One woman, when asked why they think 64 per cent of people in the same age group are not in relationships, said she thought men "cannot be bothered" to ask the opposite sex on dates because it was easier to watch internet porn.

I was at a completely empty airport, and only needed to identify myself before I could pick up my luggage. There was no queue, so 'I skipped the line'. That asshole at the desk made me walk back and compelled me to zigzag all around the fences, where nobody was standing. Afterwards, he and a colleague just laughed at me, because he knew that he could use his power like that.

A teacher in high school tried to send me to the office for having an electronic device out in the hallway. The device was medical equipment and after I explained that to him he told me he didn't care because I'd still broken a school rule. Needless to say I didn't get in trouble.

We had a pizza party for people who completed a project at work.I was training a new guy and brought leftovers so I wasn't interested in pizza. The new guy was about to take lunch and I told him if he wanted a couple slices of pizza he could have mine. Lol the guy who ran the pizza party said no way even after explaining to him I wasn't eating, and he hid the leftover pizza in his office. "Only people who worked on this project are allowed to eat the pizza".

The restaurant I used to work at required male employees to shave before a shift. It was always understood that if you were working a double you weren't shaving before the second shift. A low level manager wanted Eric to go home and shave before his night shift. Eric got stuck with a table that wouldn't leave and he didn't have enough time. The manager made him shave with a random disposable razor that they had in the back office. They didn't even have shaving cream.

On Thursday, Trump said he was ushering in a new energy policy that marked an end to decades of fretting about an alleged "energy crisis" brought on by supposed limited domestic supplies and an insatiable demand for fossil fuels.

"We now know that was all a big, beautiful myth," Trump said in remarks at the Department of Energy. "The truth is that we have near-limitless supplies of energy in our country."

Trump had already taken several steps toward unleashing domestic energy supplies, but he announced six more that he plans to take, including reviving nuclear energy, lifting barriers to building coal plants overseas, building more energy pipelines — including one into Mexico — increased natural gas exports, and creating a new offshore-leasing program.

This revelation raises the possibility that Comey broke his own agency’s rules and ignored the same security protocol that he publicly criticized Hillary Clinton for in the waning days of the 2016 presidential election.

Comey testified last month he considered the memos to be personal documents and that he shared at least one of them with a Columbia University lawyer friend. He asked that lawyer to leak information from one memo to the news media in hopes of increasing pressure to get a special prosecutor named in the Russia case after Comey was fired as FBI director.

“So you didn’t consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document?,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) asked Comey on June 8. “You considered it to be, somehow, your own personal document that you could share to the media as you wanted through a friend?”

“Correct,” Comey answered. “I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president. As a private citizen, I thought it important to get it out.”

“President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.”

To which a rational response is … who wouldn’t? And also: so, what? A third response is unprintable.

Just as the “Russian collusion” fantasy – a resentful smear cooked up in the immediate aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s stunning defeat last fall – was finally fading from the fever swamps of the “resistance” and its media mouthpieces, along comes the Times with a pair of journalistic nothingburgers.

Library officials are crediting the increased police presence and other safety measures with a significant decrease in illegal activity this summer. The downtown library has also added cameras, increased waste clean-up around the building and stocked overdose kits on site to treat patrons.

“Just observing how the building feels, there’s been a remarkable change,” said Michelle Jeske, the city librarian. “I don’t see the same activities I did a month ago.”

Typically police have only visited the library when called, but officers began regular visits in May. Police patrolled inside and outside the building for 219 hours between May 11 and June 16, according to a library news release. Both undercover and uniformed officers are are stationed in the library, said John White, a police spokesman.

“It used to be a lot worse here,” said John McClaugherty, a 61-year-old homeless man and library regular who said he stopped using the library briefly due to rampant drug use by others. “It was terrible going in the bathroom, there were needles. I feel a lot safer in here (now).”

Pairs of officers tend to monitor the library for four hours every afternoon, said Chris Henning, a library spokesman.

Talusan describes her friends Jacob Tobia and Alok Vaid-Menon as “femme nonbinary icons.” This means they don’t identify as male or female. And indeed in the picture accompanying the piece, Tobia and Vaid-Menon straddle some middle line, sporting facial stubble but wearing a skirt, makeup and heels.

It’s complicated, no doubt about it.

Talusan goes on and on about how amazing her friends are yet how no one will sleep with them. It leads to the obvious question: Why doesn’t Talusan do it? Talusan is herself gender-nonconforming, in a non-exclusive relationship and obviously thinks Tobia and Vaid-Menon are great, so why not? The answer: Talusan “presents” as female and, well, Tobia and Vaid-Menon are attracted to men.

Therein lies the rub. Gay men like men, which Tobia and Vaid-Menon say they are not. Straight men like women, which Tobia and Vaid-Menon also say they are not. They can’t alter their preferences to be attracted to women and neither can the men they desire.

Democrats lashed out at former Clinton Strategist Mark Penn on Thursday for recommending that the Democratic Party rediscover its respect for Christians and working-class Trump voters and embrace fiscal conservatism. The nearly unanimous response from the activist left was to dismiss this sage advice. “The administration that he served in locked up more black, African-American men than those enslaved in 1850,” said former Bernie Sanders campaign staffer Tezlyn Figar. Nostalgia for the 1990s may be politically potent, but it is also very un-woke.

This video of Trump picking up the hat that had blown off a Marine standing at attention at his Marine helicopter was nicked from The Gateway pundit early this morning. Suggestion: Turn off the sound so your ears are not abused by the dopey news reader and her dopey opinion about her dopey industry's dopey non-issue. The voice ruins the whole thing.

At Gateway Pundit presidential styles are compared with another photo of a Marine holding an umbrella over Obama as Obama delivers his customary tautology.

But the Trump video and his personal touch, the respect that he extends to his detail on assignment made me think of a different Obama video involving a Marine helicopter that became known as the latte salute. As onetime military brat I find this embarrassing. (Full disclosure, I didn't even know there is a term for us when I was living it.)

Provided again to relive this precious moment of intense embarrassment. He's cool, though. He avoided tossing coffee all over his shoulder.